In Between Days (21 page)

As he drives, he feels suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of what might happen to him now, by what lies ahead in his future. He thinks about the doctor’s admonitions about drinking, about the damage he might be doing to his body, about the number of years he has left. He’s been living like this for so long now—living like a twenty-three-year-old for so many years—that it almost seems normal, it almost feels like regular life. Still, he knows that at the rate he’s going he’ll be lucky if he ever reaches the age his own father had; he’ll be lucky if he ever gets to see his own children grow old. At a stoplight, he considers calling Cadence again, even dials the first six digits of her number, but when the light turns green, he loses his courage and drops the phone on the seat.

He cruises past the neon-lit daiquiri bars and tattoo parlors in his neighborhood, then turns onto his own street, a quiet residential street that seems nearly abandoned tonight. He is bracing himself for another night alone, another night spent in solitude, but as he pulls up to the curb outside his apartment building, he sees a lone, silhouetted figure sitting on the stairs. He thinks for a moment it might be Cadence, but when the figure stands up, he realizes it’s not. It’s Lorna. She’s wearing a sundress, her hair pulled back in a bun.

Without even stopping to lock up his car, he starts toward her, moving quickly along the walk, certain that she has come to reconcile, to apologize, but when he reaches the doorway, she moves away from him, to the side, then crosses her arms.

“I’m not here to talk,” she says.

“Hey,” Elson says. “Hold on.” He tries to touch her arm, but she moves away.

“I’m just here to get your key.”

“My key?”

“Yeah. To my apartment,” she says, and then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a key herself. “This is mine,” she says. “To yours.”

He stares at the key but doesn’t take it. “You’ve been waiting here all this time just to exchange keys?”

“I haven’t been waiting that long.”

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“I didn’t.”

He looks at her. “I could have just mailed it to you, you know.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t want to give you the chance to make a copy.”

“Are you kidding me?” He laughs. “You really think I’d do something like that?”

“Elson, at this point I have no idea what you’d do.”

“Come on,” he says, moving closer. “Look, I screwed up, okay. I admitted it.”

“Screwed up?” she says. “You went through my entire hard drive.”

“I didn’t go through your entire hard drive,” he says. “Just your e-mail account.”

“Just my e-mail account.” She laughs. “Really? And you think that makes it better?”

“I’m not saying it does.”

She looks at him.

“It was wrong,” he says. “Look, I admitted it. What else do you want me to say?”

“Elson, I’m not talking about this right now, okay? Either you give me the key, or else I’m going to have to find some other way of getting it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But she doesn’t answer.

“Look, let’s go inside, okay? Let’s just talk for a second.”

She stares at him, then steps away, and he can see something in her face shifting, softening.

“What is it?” he says.

“Nothing,” she says.

“You look like you want to say something.”

She looks down at her feet but doesn’t answer.

“What is it?” he says again.

But she’s already turning away.

“Lorna.”

“Look, Elson,” she says finally, turning back to him. “Just give me the fucking key, okay?”

EVEN NOW, CADENCE
regretted not calling him. She owed him a phone call at least, a chance to talk things out. He’d probably been sitting around all day yesterday, just waiting for her to call, but for some reason she hadn’t been able to pick up the phone. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to talk to him. The night before, as she lay in her bed alone, she’d found herself wondering why she was so afraid, why she cared so much. Was it possible that Elson had snaked his way back into her heart? Was it possible that she’d begun to have feelings for him again? It seemed absurd. After everything that had happened between them, after everything they’d been through, it seemed ridiculous to even consider such a thing. And yet, last night, as she lay in her bed alone, she’d felt very acutely the absence of his body. She’d felt very acutely that something was missing. After a while, she’d walked down the hallway to Chloe’s room and crawled into her bed. She’d lain there for a long time, trying not to think about Elson, trying to think about anything else, trying to remember all of the reasons they had broken up, all of the bad things that had passed between them, and after a time, as she lay there in her daughter’s bed, taking in the scent of her sheets, pulling them closely to her face, she’d managed to fall asleep.

Now, however, as she sits in her car in the bright morning sunlight, she is thinking only about the fact that they have lost an entire day over this, an entire day that they could have spent looking for Chloe or talking to the police or doing something else, anything that might bring them closer to finding her. Across the street from her, she can see the sign of the store, its name and its promise written in bright blue letters:
NEW HORIZONS
. She had found the store that morning on the Internet, had marveled at the elaborate website Simone had designed. It seemed amazing
to her that this was the same troubled girl who she had feared when Chloe was growing up, the same troubled girl who she had tried to keep her away from. How strange life was. Now, from all appearances, Simone was a successful entrepreneur, a self-made woman, a business owner, and what was Chloe? What had happened to her daughter? What choices had Simone made that Chloe hadn’t? Or vice versa. What choices had Chloe made that Simone hadn’t?

As she stares across the street, she takes a sip of her coffee, braces herself, then gets out of the car, wondering if the answers to any of these questions will be revealed to her when she finally talks to Simone, or if Simone will even be there. And if she is there, will she be able to tell her anything, anything at all, about what has happened to her daughter? Suddenly the whole idea seems a little crazy, a little half baked, but what other choice does she have? Who else can she turn to? She stares up again at the sign, then the front door, which is covered with flyers, and then finally, slowly, makes her way across the street.

Inside, the store is large and airy, sunlight streaming through the windows, the sounds of a waterfall, or running water, spilling from the speakers. She feels immediately relaxed, at ease. All around her there are bookshelves filled with books on spirituality, tables displaying sweet-smelling lotions and creams, wind chimes and mobiles swaying hypnotically from the ceiling. At the front of the store, there’s a boy behind the counter, a boy roughly Chloe’s age, who smiles at her warmly when she approaches. She asks him if she can speak to Simone, explains that she’s the mother of one of Simone’s childhood friends, then waits while he goes into the back of the store to get her.

When Simone finally comes out, she looks tired, exhausted, but immediately comes over and hugs her, tells her how nice it is to see her again, then invites her into a room at the back of the store. Simone looks basically the same as she did the last time she saw her, maybe a little older, maybe a little thinner, but otherwise pretty much the same attractive girl that Cadence remembers. As she sits down at a small table in the back, Cadence apologizes for showing up out of the blue like this, then pulls out a pad and pencil and lays them down before her.

“I mean, you must think it’s a little strange,” she says, smiling, “after all these years, you know.”

“No, not at all,” Simone says. “Can I get you some tea?”

“No,” Cadence says, “but thank you.”

“I was actually expecting you,” Simone continues, sitting down at the table herself. “I think you were supposed to come here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Simone smiles. “I guess I just mean that whenever someone shows up from your past like this, there’s always a reason. Something is unresolved. I knew that you would come, just as I knew that Chloe would come.”

“You did?” Cadence says, raising her eyebrows.

“Yes. Of course.”

Cadence stares at her, reluctant to pursue the topic further, certain that this is somehow rooted in teleology, or cosmic connectiveness, or whatever Simone happens to believe. On the wall behind Simone’s head, she can see a chart with “Seven Rules for a Better Life.” She studies the chart for a moment, then looks away.

“Chloe must have told you she came here,” Simone continues.

“She did.”

“I felt bad about that,” Simone says, “what happened. But I’m glad she found me later. We needed to talk. We needed some closure.”

“Closure?”

“Yes.”

“And do you think you found that?” Cadence asks. “Closure, I mean.”

“Perhaps,” Simone says, smiling. “It’s not for me to say.” Then she looks at Cadence warmly and folds her hands. “But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

“No,” Cadence says.

“You’re here because you’re looking for her.”

“You know about that?”

“No,” she says, “but I’m not surprised.”

Cadence stares at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m following.”

But Simone doesn’t answer. She just sits there, smiling at her, her eyes a vacant blue.

“You’re saying that you suspected she might be taking off?”

“No,” she says. “I’m just saying that I’m not surprised that she did.”

“And why’s that?”

“Well, when she was here,” Simone says, “she seemed very troubled. Very scared. She was looking for something, or perhaps running from something. I couldn’t tell.”

“Troubled in what way?”

“Oh, no particular way.”

“Just
troubled
.”

“Yes,” she says. “Just troubled.”

“Look, Simone, if you know something.”

“I just told you I didn’t.”

Cadence purses her lips, tries to restrain herself, remembering what Chloe said about Simone’s low stress threshold, her tendency to bolt. Still, she feels certain that the girl knows something, that she’s hiding something from her.

“If you know anything at all,” she continues finally. “Anything at all. Even if you have some suspicions …”

Simone looks at her, stone faced, says nothing.

“I mean, do you even know if she’s still in Houston?”

“I have no idea.”

“You haven’t spoken to her since that day?”

“No.”

“How about up north? Did she say anything about going back there? Maybe to see her boyfriend?”

Simone looks at her for a long time, then finally she says, “Mrs. Harding, I think you’re asking the wrong questions.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think that these questions will lead you to where you want to go.”

“Well, where do I want to go?”

“It’s not for me to say.”

“Look, Simone, I just want to find my daughter, okay? That’s all I want.”

“I know you do,” Simone says, patting her hand. “I know.”

It was strange.

When Chloe was young, maybe eight or ten, she had gone through a period of not talking to people, a period of time in which she’d simply stopped engaging with the outside world. It had been a period of time that Cadence still thought about now, especially lately, and that she’d been thinking about more and more ever since Chloe had disappeared. The psychologist she had taken her to see back then had told her not to worry, that this was a natural phase that all children went through and that it would probably soon blow over, that it was probably just a case of
Chloe trying to assert her independence. And yet, even though it had eventually blown over, even though Chloe had eventually returned to her former self, it had always bothered her, had always seemed to her a worrisome sign of things to come, a willful defiance that would eventually reemerge. And now it seemed that this secret side of her daughter, this side of her daughter that could disappear within herself, was also capable of true deception, of engaging in what was essentially a criminal act.

She had left Simone’s store in a state of frustration, and now, weaving recklessly through midmorning traffic, she is cursing Simone and then herself for believing that Simone might actually want to help her. Chloe had been right about her. The girl had been brainwashed. She’d been indoctrinated with some type of weird cosmological thought that took common sense and reasoning out of the equation. But still, she feels certain that she knows something, that she is hiding something from her, that she isn’t telling her the whole story.

As she passes the shops on Montrose Boulevard, she can feel the full extent of her frustration kicking in, a rage blooming inside of her. She wonders how it is that they have come to this place, how it is that she has allowed the situation to get this out of hand. Had she not done the exact same thing at Chloe’s age, had she not abandoned her own parents, had she not dropped out of school to marry Elson, had she not given up her college studies for the sake of a boy, she might even wonder why Chloe was doing this in the first place. But a part of her understands. A part of her understands more than she’d like to admit. A part of her understands how alluring a boy can seem at twenty-one. A part of her understands how easy it might seem to give up everything else for love. And, in the end, how could she blame her? How could she
blame her daughter for doing the exact same thing she had done?

Thinking about this now, she feels unsettled. She tries to remember the last time she and Chloe had a normal conversation, the last time they actually talked about something real. Chloe had told her almost nothing about Raja, only that she loved him very much and that he had treated her far better than almost any boy she’d ever met. But there was also something else, something else that her daughter wasn’t telling her, a hesitation in her daughter’s voice whenever she spoke about him, a hesitation that she used to recognize in her own voice whenever she spoke about Elson. Was it possible that her daughter was afraid of this boy? Or did she simply feel trapped, tethered to a life she couldn’t control?